


What El Paso Knows

by Hikato_chan



Category: Blue Beetle (Comics), DCU, DCU (Comics), Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen, POV of el paso, So to say, alberto is mentioned, i have no idea what to put here, only one slight injury that isn't described, superman too i guess, the citizens of el paso, the posse is mentioned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-09
Updated: 2019-04-09
Packaged: 2020-01-07 12:10:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18410372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hikato_chan/pseuds/Hikato_chan
Summary: El Paso had always watched their own little hero. It was just a matter of time until they noticed something. El Paso is a small city after all.





	What El Paso Knows

When Blue Beetle first became the town’s hero, people were skeptical. There was no way to tell who he was. There was no way to know if he was Latino, if he had black or blond hair, how old he was, even if he was actually male since the armor didn’t seem to give away any identifying marks. Then again, there was his behavior.

At first the town had gone without really interacting with him. He stopped crime and then went away with often only a glance to make sure that the victim was safe. Then, after a few weeks of gossip about the elusive hero, he finally stopped.

The reason was that, though the victim, an old woman, didn’t notice yet, she was slowly going into shock. So he stayed and talked her through it, walked her home and only left when he deemed her fit enough to be okay. The next day she told her friends in detail how he acted, teenage awkwardness included. Her description of him, of being kind and awkward but nice and able to tell if a person is going into shock, made the round the next day.

The gossip turned to that. Was that hero socially awkward? Did he wear the pretty strange armor because of that? Did he make that costume himself or was there somebody else fashion-blind around him? Granted, it was rude to comment on his costume when he was saving people, but at least the helmet looked ridiculous. They guessed it was for the whole bug motive he seemed to have going.

Another thing they turned to was the fact that he knew before the old lady did that she was going into shock. Was he maybe a nurse or doctor? A medical student given how young he might be? If he lived in the town then surely they should be able to narrow it down.

They didn’t figure it out like that. They had suspects, but all of them were disregarded after some investigation. No, the way they figured it out was a lot simpler. One woman had been growing flowers, and at that time they were in full bloom. They were beautiful, and her neighbors would look out of the window ever so often to stare at them before continuing with whatever they were doing. Of course, teenagers didn’t exactly think of that when they saw flowers.

So an elderly woman looked out again to see the flowers just in time to see the teenage boy, that she vaguely recognized, change into their hero. She described it as if darkness spread out and covered him. That of course gave the town more to gossip about.

The darkness thing was only talked about in whispers, but it stopped once the old lady repeated what she knew. He was kind. He was good. He cares. He is not some hell spawn because of how he changes into his costume. The gossipers looked kinda sheepish after that and stopped whispering.

The fact that he was a teenager made the gossipers both brighten with the knowledge that they weren’t too dumb to figure his identity out, because hey, who would have thought it was a teenager, and also frown in dread when the realized that there was a kid protecting them. Not dread for themselves, because he was handling crime rather well, but for him. He was just a child for god’s sake.

He was fifteen they figured out. It took some time and a lot of photos until they found out that it was Bianca’s kid. The Reyes boy had good grades and a few good friends from what the town could tell. They would ask another teenager, but the younger generation was still entirely unknowing of what the rest of the town had figured out. Of course, the older Reyes had been in the gossip circles too. Did they already know? Had they known before?

One brave soul asked Bianca, after a hard day of being a nurse for both of them. They were the only ones changing and packing their things, so she tentatively broached the topic.

“So, you heard about how that one old lady saw the Blue Beetle change, right?” she started. She got a non-committal hum from Bianca so she continued. “Well, apparently they finally figured out who the kid was.”

The knowing smile she got in return made her freeze. She was stuck for a few seconds while Bianca was still gathering her things.

“You knew.” She said when she finally stopped staring. She said it like she was stating a fact, and by the small laugh she received, she knew that she was right.

“Of course,” Bianca told her, “He’s my son after all. He came to us the moment… that happened to him.”

She left soon after, without explaining what had happened. It got shared around, but they had nothing to go on. The Reyes boy was normal in most aspects, with nothing really notable. He would disappear now and then, but that was all they really had on him being strange.

He never really seemed hurt, even though he was out fighting. The only time they saw him hurt was when he got shot the night before. He had taken down a gang of teenagers while only hurting them the bare minimum. He had turned away and hadn’t noticed that one was conscious and had a gun until he was shot. It was only the arm that was hit, but it was summer and the next day, the bandage peeked out of his short sleeves every once in a while. The next day the bandage was gone, to the towns relief.

The Justice League tried to recruit/talk to him in broad daylight, but by the way the kid was nervously leaning back, they guessed it wasn’t the first time he had met them. Nor did the kid seem comfortable in their presence. When he had noticed that most people were staring, he had tensed even further. Well, he was a teenager. He probably thought that they expected him to be nice to the senior heroes and be comfortable. Superman just went on and on, talking and apparently not noticing how the kid nervously crossed his arms and fidgeted.

Superman just stopped when a middle-aged woman walked up and pulled the kid to the side a bit. She looked at him and said in a deadpan voice, “This conversation is over.” Before pulling the kid gently away from the hero. He went with her, confused, and she pulled him into a crowd of people that all conveniently blocked Superman’s path though he was too stunned to follow. They got to an alley, where she gently pushed him to.

“Don’t worry.” She told him. “If they bother you again, just get to an area with people.”

She gave him a reassuring smile. “El Paso takes care of their own.”

Superman had to be wacked with a walking stick to finally stop bothering Jaime. The old man doing so didn’t regret it the slightest. He found it hilarious when people came to question him on why he did that, since apparently the whole thing was a hit on the internet, and he took to describing how uncomfortable their hero looked when Superman showed up. He explained that superman continuously made him more and more uncomfortable, that he didn’t think of Superman as bad but simply hoped to shake him out of his obliviousness a bit.

Blue Beetle was their hero. He stayed their hero, even during the whole reach fiasco. And El Paso would always protect this kid.

(After the reach was finally gone and the El Paso citizen were still confused, a young man found Jaime crying on his rooftop out of armor. It was then, while Jaime tried to explain how he got there, that the young man decided that the whole let’s-not-tell-the-kid thing had to end. He invited him in, ruffled his hair and told him that after whatever happened with the reach it was okay to cry. Jaime had tensed, but the young man had just gone on, telling him that if he wanted to talk about it, he would listen. El Paso took care of his own after all. Jaime told him, and he spread it. If the Reach had still been there, they would have had an entire town after their heads. Nobody hurt their own like that.)

(When the Justice League tried to stir up trouble, the town kicked them out without Jaime even knowing until later on. He made sure to leave chocolate to the people responsible in gratitude.)

(After some time, an old friend of Bianca’s asked her how she could deal with knowing that her son was getting himself into danger like that. She had smiled sadly, with a hint of resignation, and asked how she should stop him. She clarified that she didn’t mean physically, but how she should justify it for herself. After the Reach fiasco, it seemed like her son was only happy when he was helping people. As if he had to make up for something. With the look that he sometimes had- she didn’t think that she was allowed to stop him. So she made sure to tend to all his wounds and hope he would make it back in one piece.)

(The younger generation still had no idea who blue beetle was, and sometimes the adults shared a chuckle at their expense. Even Posse didn’t know that the older generation knew, though that might be because they were rather disconnected from the rest of the city. It took Esteban shapeshifting for him to hear about it. La Dama still has no idea.)

(It took a disaster for the younger generation to finally be in the know. Still, his identity never spread further than the town borders. Those who left the town took the secret to their graves.)


End file.
